


just ash in the wind

by silkensong



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Exploration, Gen, Memories, tpk is as terrible as ever and he isn't even here!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29620551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkensong/pseuds/silkensong
Summary: A sign in the abandoned City of Tears:the great gates have been sealed. None shall enter. None shall leave.Or: on Hallownest, and its foundations.
Relationships: The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & Hornet & The Knight
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	just ash in the wind

The Knight stares down the well that leads into the Crossroads. It will be a long fall, they can tell, past the wisps of shadow and the long chain winding down into the depths. They pick up a small brick piece, broken from the roof of a house nearby, letting it fall to the ground below. The sound does not reflect back at them for a long, long while.

A distant part of them remembers what it was like to fall. Something old, something ancient, beyond this kingdom whose dying body is calling for anything. Salvation perhaps, or freedom. It remembers hundreds of others around it─hundreds upon hundreds with empty eyes and single-minded focus─it remembers the snap of brittle things breaking. The details are scant, blurred over, obscured to the mind’s eye. The Knight does not mind this. What they do mind is the way it lingers.

The Knight continues to stare at the well below. Beneath scrutiny, it almost seems to morph: the shadows turn lighter, the earth-smell in the air grows sweeter, a dappling of orange light casts itself over a hidden body. Already they know things that they should not. Already they remember that there is a seal within the wastes that they can get without dashing, that within the peaks there’s an idol they can reach if they break the right barrels, that something is calling for them, deep beneath this hallowed earth. Now that they think about it, they know a lot of things which they really should not.

(They blink, and the well is not a well any more. The sky is marred by clouds and ash; this rain is harsh against their chitin and their cloak in equal measure. Two great figures hulk in the distance, as blurry and indistinct as everything else that this Knight has known. Lightning carves a slice from the sky. For a moment, this world illuminates: the two figures are stone mimicries of something that was once alive, the Godseeker weeping at their feet.)

Old emotion stirs in their chest. They want to leave─they need to leave, but they do not remember why, but they remember falling and hurting and missing someone so deeply that it is a hole within their unbeating heart. As they knew of the Hallownest Seal so too do they know of the Hollow Knight, whose pain is so tangible that it tears the world they knew in two.

_I left you behind,_ the Hollow Knight whispers. Its words carve a chasm into the dirt, where the Knight knows that hundreds upon hundreds of bugs have fallen before.

_I left you behind,_ the Knight returns. The pain does not lessen; and that is something of Hallownest, that all it leaves you with is your own hurt, and it takes away all else that you knew. Even that is not enough to separate them from this other knight, this stranger who is a piece of their heart _. I will return one day,_ they promise.

They do not leave this decaying kingdom behind.

In the wake of their meeting in the City of Tears, Hornet begins to guard the Kingdom’s Edge. She keeps as much to herself as she can: she avoids the Nailmaster’s hut, or sends the scouts of the Colosseum fleeing with the distinctively-shaped wounds that only a needle can make. Primal aspids become more of an annoyance than anything else, though the great hoppers have enough weight and force behind them that she must still be careful.

Mostly, she acts as a guard. It is what she had done in Greenpath, though now that endeavor seems fruitless. (There is more than one way to Hallownest’s depths, though the Pilgrim’s Way had been the least dangerous; why would a warrior take the easy way down?) An ancient gate of teeth and claws blocks any further movement beyond her. If this vessel wishes to enter the Abyss, then it will have to defeat her one last time.

(One last time, and twice more beyond that.)

The wind behind her shrieks. It used to be gentle, Hornet thinks, though this has long since been unlearned. Now it simply shrieks and wails and cries, an aching wound that refuses to close. Hornet will let these ghosts lie for now. Her mission is only this: ensuring that Hallownest’s killer is at least strong enough for the task.

Behind her, the wind grows stronger. A flurry of cold, grey dust scatters upwards, catching on the teeth and the claws and the serrated edge of her nail, built to kill. Hornet idly flicks it away. Often she wonders about its source: the ash is ever present at both edges of the kingdom, and so too is the wind. To the vessel she named it Grave in Ash. Fitting, for a kingdom built on its dead.

She does not know how true it is. Not yet, at least. For now there is this: Hornet, polishing her needle until it glitters; the Knight, steadily approaching; and the void sea, far below.

The Knight is staring down at the Abyss below. This they remember, now, sudden and striking. They had been clinging on to the edge of the platform. They had been watching their sibling─the Hollow Knight, always them, further away than they have ever been─as they walked after the pale light. They had not been able to make it up alone. Neither of them had. The Hollow Knight had chosen to let them fall.

_I left you behind,_ the ghost of the child that was the Hollow Knight says. The words are frail and weak. The vessel does not know why they are so insistent on this.

_I forgive you,_ murmurs the shadow of the Knight that lies in the Abyss. It had been so hard to get back up, and yet they had. _I forgive you,_ they repeat. _I always will._

A sign in the abandoned City of Tears: _the great gates have been sealed. None shall enter. None shall leave._

A sign within the Temple of the Black Egg: their sibling, still waiting for an ending that they do not know will arrive.

A sign within a dream: the Godseeker, calling out, _O God of Gods, O Raging Light, O Pure Vessel, answer my call._ The silence that greets her. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from _the heritors of arcadia_ sung by bonnie gordon. i'll clean this up a little in the morning—it's been sitting around for a few days and i wanted to post it.
> 
> thank you so much for reading! please comment if u enjoyed <3
> 
> [my twitter! ](https://twitter.com/silkensongs)


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